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How to do efficient optimization
By Billy | July 2, 2008
A beginner’s mistake is to test every idea with every test. This is the most obvious way of being efficient. If I can test 50 things in a week, why not?
In my experience, efficiency has more to do with careful test design and doing things right the first time, than trying to test everything and rushing the process. By testing a few big ideas quickly and then designing the next test based on those results, you can do a set of small tests and get answers fast without having to risk your page to many bad ideas.
Every test should have specific questions its trying to answer. Not just “What’s the best performing page?” but questions that lead to that. A car salesman doesn’t blindly try every tactic in the book get you to buy a car, a real salesman probes you with a few questions and changes their technique accordingly.
That’s how you should design your tests.
Here’s an example test plan that works for most clients:
- Step 1 (Split Test) - Find an optimal template/design: What template and/or design effectively gets visitors to stick, click and convert? At this stage, you aren’t testing messaging yet, you’re merely re-skinning and moving elements around to find a good design. Some techniques to use are simplifying the page by de-emphasizing unimportant content (shrink company logo, move ads to the bottom of the page) and emphasizing core content (moving 3rd party validation near the call to action) and adding more whitespace to the page to enhance readability. These are in addition to a well done creative design. This test usually has the greatest impact, however it all depends on your current page and the audience. (Read more on template testing)
- Step 2 (Multivariate Test) - Find the biggest converting segment: This test focuses on finding the correct messaging by appealing to different segments that you know and hypothesize visit your page. If your product was Google Apps, you might test appealing to business users and freelancers. Or if you are selling a cell phone, you might test features against benefits.
- Step 3 (Multivariate Test) - Find the perfect way to communicate to the segment: Step 2 points you in the right direction, but this step helps you find the exact place you should be with your page. Use what you learned (freelance messaging won) and try variations on that winning theme to really grab your audience and give them what they want. Also, step 2 may have revealed 2 or more segments that are worth targeting. If you can segment them out, run multiple tests that are customized for each segment, and you’ll raise conversions even higher.
The alternative is to test 50 ideas of which many of the ideas overlap. Why test any ideas that are remotely similar until you know that they work in general? If I go to a dealership wanting a sports car and the dealer offers me 5 colors of minivans, I’m still not going to buy a minivan. Show me 4 types of cars, let me pick the one I like and then we might talk about color.
Let your visitors lead you!
This really is a simple process, but it drives results. Be methodical to be efficient. By course correcting in each test, you get closer and closer to what you need and don’t spend a lot of time testing losing elements. Follow a test plan like this and you’ll get results and learn a lot about your core converting visitors.
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Topics: Landing Page Optimization, Methodology, Testing Techniques |